When creating searchable documents from images or PDF documents in DEVONthink Pro or Server, there are two mechanisms that process them: Apple’s Vision framework or traditional OCR. While seemingly similar in output, there are important differences between them.

Vision

Apple’s Vision framework examines an image and recognizes text in it. It stores this in an index, letting you find the document by its text while not affecting the actual file. This can apply to a standalone image or to a page image within a PDF document. However, Vision stores the text locally, so sharing the document with someone, e.g., on a PC with no Live Text function, gives them just the PDF without any text data.

In DEVONthink’s Settings > Files > Import > Recognize, the Make text in PDF documents searchable feature uses Vision to process image-based PDFs (like scanned pages) when you import such documents. The text will be stored in the index of DEVONthink, so if you export the PDF, it will no longer be searchable. Also, you can choose a Vision model in the AI > Transcription > Images settings that processes images, e.g., on import, or via Data > Recognition > Transcribe Text & Notes.

We recommend only enabling these options if you need them, especially as they will process every incoming image or PDF document. You can always use the features on a case-by-case basis.

Traditional OCR

Traditional OCR generates a text layer and applies it to the document, or, more commonly, creates a new document. The processed document can be shared or moved to other devices and remains searchable since the text layer is part of it. This is much more robust and makes it a more broadly useful feature.

Traditional OCR doesn’t happen on import but can be accomplished manually via Data > OCR or by using smart rules. It uses the OCR settings for resolution, output, etc.

How to find out what needs OCR?

In both cases, OCR and Vision, a PDF document may show it has words in it, including in the Tools > Inspectors > Concordance. For Vision-processed files, this information comes from the index, not the document itself. So when trying to identify PDF documents that need OCR, the correct criteria for a DEVONthink search is Kind is PDF/PS and Word Count is 0 since Vision documents have no text layer, therefore no words.

You may also want to have a look at our tip How to Deal With PDF Searchability.

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In the Pro and Server editions of DEVONthink, you can create personalized stamps to mark your PDFs and images. Imprint your documents, for example, with a name, date, location, or an item link. Or use custom metadata to imprint your documents with bibliographic data such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

In a new tutorial, we show you how to create and use these imprints in DEVONthink. Choose Help > Tutorials to access the tutorial in our Support Assistant. For more information on imprinting, see the Settings > Imprinter section of the built-in Help or the user handbook.

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If you frequently read in DEVONthink To Go and prefer reading in fullscreen view, things just got better with its new Zen mode.

Zen mode hides the application’s interface (the chrome) for distraction-free reading. To switch to Zen mode, show a document, e.g., a PDF document, then select ••• > Enter Zen Mode. Alternatively, enable Enter Zen mode on tap in the document’s View Options menu (three sliders) or in Settings > Documents, and tap a non-interactive part of the document. The interface disappears, leaving just the document to read.

When you enter Zen mode, a notice appears at the top of the screen: Tap for tools, double-tap to exit. If you want to exit Zen mode quickly, double-tap at the top of the screen. If you want to annotate or edit the document, tap once at the top of the screen and the toolbars reappear so you can work on the document. Also, the toolbar button with two inward-facing diagonal arrows exits Zen mode.

Lastly, if you want to disable that documents switch to Zen mode when you just touch them, disable the option the Settings. You can also quickly turn this global setting on and off via the View Options menu.

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When using AI on mobile devices, you typically access cloud services like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT. You can’t run a full local model on an iPhone today, but you can run one on your Mac and connect DEVONthink To Go to it.

First, your AI application needs to make itself accessible on the network. Look in the application’s Settings or its help for terms to that effect. You also need to enable Local Network access for DEVONthink To Go in the OS’ Settings > Privacy & Security. If needed, make sure to allow the connection in your firewall or network application.

Using LM Studio as our example, open its Developer view, load a model, and ensure the server is running. You will see a http://localhost:1234 or http://127.0.0.1:1234 URL appear. It’s a self-reference that AI-enabled applications on your Mac can use to connect to LM Studio running on the same machine. But other devices are not your Mac, therefore you can’t use that URL in DEVONthink To Go. However, it is possible to connect our mobile application to an AI application on your Mac.

Back in LM Studio’s Developer view, click the Server Settings button, and enable Serve on Local Network. You will see the URL change to an proper IP address. Click the copy icon to copy the URL.

In DEVONthink To Go’s Settings > AI, choose LM Studio. It will be pre-populated with a URL. Select everything before the colon and either paste or type in the protocol and IP address, e.g., http://192.168.12.185. Make sure that the port, e.g., :1234, doesn’t appear twice, because the copied URL could already include it. It should connect to LM Studio on your Mac and display the available models you have loaded.

Note, however, that IP addresses can change, and when it does, you would have to update the URL in the settings. However, you can instead use the Bonjour name of your Mac. So instead of using the IP address, you can enter, e.g., http://leonidasx.local. Now the URL will remain valid even if the IP address changes.

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Quickly navigate your databases with your favorites right on the databases list. Color groups and tags and order documents manually if needed. The chat can highlight text passages and ignores documents from databases you exclude. You can also open a chat for multiple selected documents. We’ve updated the support for many AI models, too, added GPT 5.5 Pro and the Xiaomi models, and removed outdated ones.

Set a default font for text, Markdown, rich text, and formatted notes documents, and adjust the line height. Floating statistics show character, word, and paragraph counts. If you’re working with Markdown, the renderer/parser of version 4.2 is more compliant with common Markdown features, faster, and more reliable. We’ve also revisited the search to make it more complete and more compatible with DEVONthink for Mac. It finds documents with attached chats, too.

In addition, we have revised many icons and menu commands throughout the app for consistency. The main menu lets you directly access information about the app, the integrated help pages, the tips we regularly post on our blog, and send us feedback.

Of course, we’ve improved the overall reliability and performance, and fixed bugs and glitches.

You can find a complete list of all improvements in Settings > Help > Read Me inside the app. The New & Improved page also highlights what’s new in each feature release. We recommend this update to all users of DEVONthink To Go. The App Store will either install the update automatically for you or you can find it in the Updates area of the App Store app. If you are still using an older generation of DEVONthink To Go, version 4 is a new app and you’ll need to install it manually. DEVONthink To Go 4 is included with every license for DEVONthink 4 Pro or Server for Mac as long as it receives updates.

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When you get a new Mac, your user account gets set up for day-to-day use, whether for work or play. But adding a second user account has some real benefits. And while it may sound complicated, it is straightforward to do.

1. Open System Settings > Users & Groups.
2. Click Add User (you may need to authenticate with your admin password).
3. Choose an account type. For technical support or your own use, we recommend using an Administrator account. For family, employees, etc., use Standard.
4. Enter the Full Name (which appears as the login) name. You can accept the automatically suggested Account Name (the name of the home directory) or change it.
5. Enter and verify the Password for the account login, then click Create User.
6. Optionally, enable Fast User Switching in the Menu Bar settings. This makes it easy to move between user accounts as needed.
7. Log into the new account and set it up. macOS prompts you to sign in with an Apple ID, but it’s optional. You can skip it or use a different Apple ID for this account.

So when is this actually useful?

• Troubleshooting: If an app misbehaves, log into the new account and check whether the problem occurs there. If it doesn’t, the issue is likely confined to your original user account (preferences, caches, or user-level settings). A separate administrator account can also be useful if you need to take your Mac to someone for hardware maintenance.
• Personal/Professional Separation: If you’re using your Mac for business and personal use, designate the new account for one of those uses. If you have a work-related Apple ID, sign into it, and keep your work and life documents separated.
• Multiple Users: In business settings where employees share Macs between shifts, each employee can have their own user account on the same Mac. At home, you can make an account for your family members or a guest account. In such cases, it’s common to create a Standard account and implement stricter controls on things like installing applications or the amount of screen time.

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Joe Kissel from Take Control Books has published the fourth quaterly update for his ebook Take Control of DEVONthink 4. It now covers DEVONthink 4.3.2 and DEVONthink To Go 4.1.3. The changes include our new MCP Server, our widgets for iOS, iPadOS, and the Mac, as well as support for RSS feeds in DEVONthink To Go.

Download Take Control of DEVONthink 4 for free from our Handbooks and Extras page or directly from Take Control Books.

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You might assume that our applications will do certain things automatically, such as performing OCR on imported files. However, many decisions are yours to make, not the software’s. We prefer clear opt‑in controls rather than hidden opt‑outs. Several features or actions in DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go require setup on your part before they function on their own. These are the most common ones:

• Sync: Not every database needs to be synced. You must set the same sync location on each device running DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go, then choose which databases to sync. If you create new databases, manually enable them for syncing or import them from the sync location. For more information, have a look at our sync checklist for DEVONthink.
• AI: Nothing is enabled by default, because AI always remains a private matter. If you want to use external AI, set up a connection to your provider in the AI settings and obtain any required API keys. You can also choose task-specific models, e.g., for summarization.
• Automation: In DEVONthink, you must manually run automations or configure their event triggers. Scripts and batch processes must be run manually. Newly installed, created, or duplicated smart rules initially use the On Demand trigger. Add other triggers, e.g., On Import, if you want them to run automatically.
• OCR: DEVONthink does not automatically OCR every image or PDF on import. Set up a smart rule to detect those documents and run OCR. To make incoming scans from a known scanning software searchable, switch on Settings > OCR > Convert Incoming Scans. In DEVONthink To Go, enable OCR > Make scans searchable for in-app scans.

In the Settings, our applications give you precise control over many options, including automatically importing email attachments, scheduling RSS updates, creating thumbnails, or transcribing media files. We believe you should decide how much an app does on its own.

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Using MCP (Model Context Protocol) you can make the data stored in DEVONthink (Pro and Server) and many of its abilities availble to your preferred AI client, e.g., Claude or Codex. But how does MCP work, how do you enable it, and what can you actually do with it? Two new tutorials get you started: Understanding MCP and Using AI Skills.

Select Help > Tutorials in the menu of DEVONthink Pro and Server to access them. And if you want to learn more about the topic, take a look at the Getting Started > AI Explained section of the built-in Help or user handbook. You can also find more articles about using generative AI in DEVONthink here in our blog.

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You can automate work in DEVONthink both interactively and unattended. Smart rules and reminders both support time-based actions. Smart rules’ time-based triggers run at intervals: every minute, hourly, daily, weekly. This is great for tasks that can run within a general timeframe, e.g., “This needs to be done sometime tomorrow”. But reminders have the advantage when precise scheduling is needed.

Reminders let you set exact times, days, and well-defined recurrences. You’ll have these options:

• Once: only trigger an alarm once.
• Hourly: run at a chosen time and interval.
• Daily: run at a chosen time, with a configurable day interval.
• Weekly: pick days of the week and interval (e.g., every two weeks).
• Monthly: choose a calendar day or an occurrence (e.g., second Thursday).
• Yearly: select months and occurrences.

While reminders have fewer built-in actions than smart rules, they still support a range of practical alarms: play a sound, send an email, open a document, or run a script. If you plan to automate via scripting, see Automation > Reminder Scripts in the Help for examples and details.

Imagine you have a timesheet you’d need to open every Friday before you leave work. Maybe you want to open the stock page in your browser every morning at 9:30 am. Or how about optimizing and creating a database archive on the last Sunday of each month? You can precisely schedule all these things with reminders. Add a reminder to a document in its Info > Annotations & Reminders inspector.

For broader, event-driven automation and reminders when you need more precise timing use smart rules. Pick the one that fits how precisely your task needs to be scheduled.

Note: Enable Settings > General > Enable reminder alarms to ensure your alarms will function properly.

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DEVONthink lets you use several common file formats: PDF documents for reading, rich text and Markdown for writing, and many more. But if you need to record information in a spreadsheet-style format, we also have a native format for that: sheets.

A DEVONthink sheet is a file format for displaying tabular data in an accessible and editable way. If you have ever used Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers, sheets will look familiar to you. Composed of user-definable columns and rows, it is useful for keeping records on a variety of topics, like genealogy, software licenses, customer information, bibliographic data, and more. You can find some useful example sheets in DEVONthink’s Data > New from Template menus, e.g., Education > Books.

Create a sheet via the Data > New menu. Define the columns you need by giving each a name and choosing a data type, e.g., text, date and time, URL, country, a Boolean (checkbox) option, and more. Or if you have a TSV (tab-separated values) or CSV (comma-separated values) file, you can import and use it as a sheet. Work on a sheet by clicking a cell and entering the information. Tab to the next column, or press ⏎ to create a new record or jump to the next row. You can edit the columns, add or delete rows via the Tools > Sheets commands or the buttons in the Editing bar above the view/edit pane.

When viewing a sheet, you can click the column headers to sort on that column. For Pro and Server users, you can use the View > Document Display > Form View to view each record as a form, a view familiar to FileMaker users.

One thing to be aware of: despite the similar appearance to Excel or Numbers, sheets are plain text under the hood and don’t support advanced features like formulae or conditional formatting.

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One year after the release of DEVONthink 4.0 many of you have received a notice that your license will soon no longer receive updates. When the time has come, exactly nothing will happen to DEVONthink on your Mac and your databases. The app will happily continue to work as it has and might even receive a maintenance update or two; only starting with the next feature update, it will no longer install those^*.

So there’s no need to hurry up if you don’t need to be on the forefront right now. You can extend your license with another year of updates at any time in the future, whenever it fits.

However, if you do plan to extend your license with updates, you may want to do it before the time has run out. Extending in time gives you 10% discount on the price for one year of updates but also the option to extend by two years with 20% discount and even three years with 30% off. While we sometimes do promotions giving discounts, the option to extend by two or three years at once is only available while your license still receives updates.

In the past, we have covered how to scan to DEVONthink To Go using a third-party app and how to use your iPhone as a scanner for DEVONthink. But you can also use the built-in scan feature of DEVONthink To Go to scan directly into the current database, and even make searchable, multi-page documents.

First, set up OCR. Go into Settings > OCR and enable Make scans searchable, choose a language if needed, and adjust further options to suit your situation.

Now go into a database, tap the Add button (+) and choose Scan. The first time you do a scan, you’ll be prompted to allow use of the camera. Once the permission is granted, position the mobile device over a document. You’ll see a blue, dynamic polygon, moving as it tries to detect page edges. Once it determines where it thinks the page is, it will automatically capture the page and a thumbnail of the captured page appears at the lower left. To switch to manual capture instead, tap the Shutter button.

If one scan is all you need, tap the checkmark button and the document will be saved in the database, and OCR will make it searchable. If you are scanning a multi-page document, change the page and continue the process until finished. Then tap the checkmark button to save the scans into one document.

To quickly access the scanner from your home screen, long-press DEVONthink To Go’s application icon and choose New Scan. The app will open and you can follow the process described above.

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Very soon, macOS will no longer support Intel Macs. Upgrading hardware is also a good impetus to upgrade DEVONthink. If you’re running the Pro or Pro Office editions of the 2.x line, here is the smoothest migration path to version 4.

At no point should you run any uninstaller application or try to manually uninstall DEVONthink 2 or 3 until instructed to below. Also, make sure you have the last release of version 2 installed: 2.11.3. If needed, you can download it and replace your current version from our legacy downloads.

These instructions are written so you can follow them without guesswork. It will go much faster than you imagine!

1. In the Finder, press ⇧⌘A to open the Applications directory. Leave this window open.
2. In your web browser, download the latest version of the 3.x line from our Legacy Downloads.
3. Unzip the archive, open the disk image, and install DEVONthink 3 into the Applications directory.
4. Launch DEVONthink 3 and quit it.
5. Back in the Applications directory, move the DEVONthink 3 and DEVONthink Pro / Pro Office applications to the trash.
6. In your web browser, download the latest version of 4.x from our Downloads.
7. Unzip, open the disk image, and install it in the Applications directory.
8. Launch and quit DEVONthink 4.
9. Restart your Mac.
10. After the machine has restarted, empty the trash.
11. Read the Getting Started > First and Last Steps section in the built-in Help and manual.

Your global inbox should be intact and open. Now just do a Spotlight search for kind:database name:dtBase2 and open your databases.

If you were running DEVONthink 2.x Personal, contact our customer support and we’ll help you with the transition.

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MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a mechanism that allows AI assistants to communicate with apps to accomplish tasks for you. On macOS Sequoia and later, DEVONthink now has its own MCP server built-in, presenting new opportunities to access and work with your databases from outside the application.

First, set up DEVONthink’s MCP server in Settings > AI > MCP by enabling the server for one of the built-in providers: Anthropic Claude, OpenAI Codex, or the Hermes Agent. Then switch to that application and try describing what you want, e.g., Find all my notes about project X or Create a summary document in my Research database's inbox. The AI checks the available commands and carries out the task, including: reading and summarizing records, creating and updating documents, moving items between groups, and adding tags or annotations, etc. The more specific and thorough the prompt, the better the result.

Information provided via MCP responses, like the content of invoices you’ve requested to be examined and graphed, is sent to the AI provider’s servers online. But DEVONthink reinforces data privacy by redacting or obscuring personal information like credit card numbers, email addresses, etc. if you’ve enabled Redact sensitive content in the MCP settings.

Also, the AI acts on whichever databases are open at the time. If you don’t want the external AI to “see” an item, enable Exclude from Chat & MCP in the Generic Info inspector. For databases, enable the same option in the File > Database Properties or merely close that particular database.

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A menu bar icon appears whenever its HTTP server is running, giving you quick access to server controls, settings, and the URL you need to connect. And because some databases should simply never touch an AI, the Exclude from Chat & MCP option lets you exclude entire databases at once — enabled automatically for encrypted and revision-proof databases.

Beyond the MCP server, DEVONthink 4.3 Herschel brings sweeping AI improvements. The chat assistant now redacts more sensitive information, e.g., phone numbers, credit card numbers, authentication tokens, and labeled secrets, before anything is sent to a language model, a protection that extends to AI smart actions and summarize and transform functions. It supports the Apple Intelligence Foundation model for simple tasks, and you can choose which AI model handles automatic tagging. We have also updated numerous AI models, including Claude Opus 4.7, GPT 5.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Mistral Small 4 and Medium 3.5, Flux 2, and many OpenRouter models.

Replacing MultiMarkdown, our new Markdown parser and renderer supports callouts, citations, captioned tables, and improved CriticMarkup. It is also more compatible with AI-generated output. Markdown documents know about smart quotes and dashes, and converting them to plain text strips all formatting and renders MathJax in readable form.

Finally, new desktop widgets for macOS Sequoia and later let you quickly view or access your Reading List or Favorites, load a workspace, or read the useful tips we regularly publish on our blog. For Server users, the web interface gets a dialog for opening provided item links and lets you reveal, move, duplicate, and replicate items from the context menu. The See Also inspector has a new section for classifying documents, and we have rebuilt the PDF viewer with a table of contents, page thumbnails, and full-text search across all browsers.

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If you use custom metadata in DEVONthink Pro and Server or DEVONthink To Go, you’ve probably used text-based attributes like Single-Line Text. These attributes are defined in DEVONthink’s Settings > Data and commonly accessed in Tools > Inspectors > Info: Data. You can use each type in the ways you want, but here are the features and limitations of each:

• Single-Line Text remembers and lets you choose values you’ve previously typed. You can also add default values in the Data settings. That clears the memory of those previously entered values and only items you’ve defined will be offered. However, unlike a Set, you still can add ad-hoc information too. Note, these impromptu entries will not be remembered so if you want to use the value again, add it to the attribute’s settings.
• Multi-Line Text is exactly as described: text over multiple lines but without any formatting. To create new paragraphs, press ⌥⏎.
• The Rich Text type is similar to the multi-line option, but does allow formatting, e.g., bold and italic text. Create new paragraphs by simply pressing ⏎. You can even press ⌘T to open the Font panel and switch fonts.
• The Identifier is the simplest and strictest type: you enter text, with no formatting, without multiple lines, and no memory of previously entered values. This is often used for static, single-purpose information like software license keys, policy numbers, and similar static values.
• With a Set, you define the only values you can choose in the popup. This lets you strictly control the choices you (or others) have. If you need a new option to choose, add it to the attribute’s settings.

In DEVONthink To Go, you’ll open Settings > Data for definitions. To open a document’s Data inspector, open the Info popup, then tap ℹ︎ next to General, and choose Data.

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If you have ever wondered where your tags are or didn’t know each of your DEVONthink databases has its own Inbox, or maybe felt like you’re getting lost scrolling to find groups, you should know about unified elements. Unified items gather some items of the same type in the Navigate sidebar, the leftmost pane on a main window. This is similar to how Apple Mail, for instance, has Inboxes in its Favorites sections. Toggle unified elements in DEVONthink’s Settings > General > Interface > Sidebar.

Unify Inboxes and Tags

Every database has its own Inbox and Tags group. If they aren’t unified, these appear alongside the other groups in the database. Enable Unify inboxes and all inboxes, including the Global Inbox, are collected in the Globals > Inboxes section. Enable Unify tags and all Tags groups appear in Globals > Tags.

When Inboxes and/or Tags are unified, clicking on those top-level items in the Globals section displays a union of the contents of every Inbox or Tags group it contains. Click the disclosure triangle to only access items of individual, open databases.

Unify Databases

When databases are unified, they are listed in the Open Databases section and can all be expanded there — the databases and their groups are all unified in one sidebar section.

Disabling this option does two things: (1) Open databases’ names are shown in Open Databases giving you quick access to the root of each database, and (2) a section for the selected database appears in the sidebar, listing only the groups in that database, isolating its groups.

Unify Elements in DEVONthink To Go

For mobile users, in DEVONthink To Go you can unify Inboxes or Tags via the View Options button (with three descending lines) on the databases screen or in Settings > Interface & Chat.

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Callouts are highlighted blocks of text in a document showing notes or asides. For example, in a textbook or an online tutorial, you have likely come across highlighted blocks pointing out tips, notes, or important information. In DEVONthink To Go 4.1 Lagrange, our new Markdown renderer now supports easily creating them in your Markdown documents.

In Markdown, callouts are a type of blockquote but use a special syntax: > [!type-of-callout] Optional Title. Make sure there is no space between the exclamation point and the callout type. In the next line, you start with another > and then type your text. Here are the supported callouts (you can see what they look like in the screenshot above):

Important

> [!important] Boating Tip
> Remember this alliterative phrase: Red right, returning…

Note

This is the same as [!info].

> [!note] 
> The minimum system requirement is macOS 13.5 Ventura.

Warning

You can create multi-line callouts by placing a blockquote character on each line.

> [!warning] Beware of coral snakes
> When you see a snake, repeat this rhyme:  
> Red touch black, friend of Jack  
> Red touch yellow, kill a fellow.

Caution

> [!caution]
> Slow down for yellow lights.

Tip

> [!tip] Accounting Trick 01
> Errors in numerical transposition are always divisible by 9.

Currently, this feature is only available in DEVONthink To Go, but we’re also bringing it to DEVONthink in a future release.

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While you’re reading through a PDF or other document in DEVONthink, you may run into words or phrases and wonder what other documents may contain them. You could start a new search, then copy and paste the text, or re-type it. But there is a more efficient method.

Select a word or phrase in a document. Control-click it and choose Search »…« or Search Selected Phrase, depending on whether you selected just one word or multiple words. DEVONthink starts a search in the same main window.

• If you don’t find anything interesting in the search results, clear the search field by clicking the × at the right end, and you will return to your document.
• If you do find a result you want to look at, double-click it to open it in a new document window. In the new window, the search terms will be highlighted. If the Search inspector is open, it will immediately search the document and show the occurrences. If not, press ⌘F to open the inspector with the search term ready to use.

If you use the Pro or Server edition, you have a second option available. Double-click a word in the Tools > Inspectors > Concordance inspector, and it will initiate a search in your databases.

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